Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/173

 magnificent bird, about the size of the dusky grouse of the Sierra. They are quite abundant here, flying up with a vigorous whirr of wings and a loud, hearty, cackling "kek-kek-kep" every few yards all the way across the tundra. The cocks frequently took up a position on some slight eminence to observe us. They seemed happily in place out on the wide moor, with abundance of berries to eat through the summer, spring, and fall, and willows and alder buds for winter. Then they are pure white, and warmly feathered down to the ends of their toes. The sandpipers had fine feeding-grounds about the shallow pools. The gray moor is a fine place for curlews, too, and snipe. The plants in bloom were primula, andromeda, dicentra, mertensia, veratrum, ledum, saxifrage, empetrum, cranberry, draba of several species, lupine, stellaria, silene, polemonium, buckbean, bryanthus, several sedges, a liliaceous plant new to me, five species of willow, dwarf birch, alder, and a purple pedicularis, the showiest of them all. The primula and a bryanthus-like heathwort were the most beautiful. The tundra is composed of a close sponge of mosses about a foot deep, with lichens growing on top of the mosses, and a thin growth of grasses and sedges and most of the flowering